Friday, August 10, 2012

Friday Freebie

This week has been so busy. I have barely had time to keep up with blogging and blog stalking. I haven't even started school officially yet and I've still been super busy. Last week I had a workshop Monday and then our annual staff retreat Tuesday and Wednesday and then a library board orientation on Thursday. On top of those things, I got a letter where I'm called for jury duty on August 28th, a car stopped in the middle of the road and then backed into me, and I had my knee x rayed.(I had a skiing accident when I was in high school and never had it checked out. My knee has bothered me off and on for over 10 years now and here lately I haven't been able to exercise because of swelling and pain.) It has been quite a week. But I had some great days getting ready for school to start. The workshop I had on Monday had to do with our Parks as A Classroom program. We're lucky enough to partner with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that is our backyard. Each grade level k-8 goes on 3 park field trips a year that integrate all subject areas with a focus on science and social studies. Our coordinator for the the program does an awesome job. She shared some great website resources with us that I hope to share with you guys later. I'm still experimenting with the best ways to share website information. Our field trips in first grade this year, focus a lot of community and culture of the area. I'm pretty excited about them. We had the opportunity to explore some websites and to do some pre-planning.
The next two days we were immersed in common core and assessments. It was probably the most positive one we've had since I've been teaching at my current school. The data person for our district showed us some snippets from Mr. Holland's Opus. I haven't' seen this movie since it came out in the theater when I was in high school. I need to watch the movie through again. I think the whole table I was sitting was crying at the end of the movie. It was such a great reminder as to why we do what we do in teaching. He reminded us that parents send us their best kids. They don't keep their best kids at home. My first principal I worked for told us this my first year teaching and it has always stuck with me. We spent some time looking at our math curriculum map. I had stumbled on some pacing guides from Donna at Math Coach's Corner. She has some great math resources and you should visit her blog if you haven't before.
After seeing my superhero placemat, I had made for my kids. I had a couple of requests to make a kindergarten friendly one. So I'm sharing the one I made here. The clipart is some free clipart that was offered at MelonHeadz. I've been dying to use it for something. I think they are so cute. Please leave me some feedback if you download this freebie.

I'm participating in freebie Friday at TBA. You should check out all the freebies that are being offered.

My goal is to get ahead in the blogging world. I hope to get some posts scheduled this weekend. I have been working on getting ahead of the game with school starting this week. I just put 6 meals in the freezer that are ready for the crockpot. (I plan to share these in a future blog post.) Tomorrow I'll be cleaning to get ready for the week.
I can't believe my summer is coming to an end.

I'm from Illinois and I just drove through the Great Smoky Mountain area. It was so amazing watching the mountains "SMOKE". It is a visual that will stick in my head for the rest of my life. It is a beautiful place. I will confess that I loved my flat Illinois verus the mountains when I was caught in a downfall of driving rain.